A.B. Magil

A.B. Magil, (1905– January 2003), also known as Abraham B. Magil and "Abe" Magil, was a Yiddish-speaking, full-time Communist Party and "Marxist journalist and pamphleteer."[1][2]

A.B. Magil
Born1905 (1905)
Philadelphia
Died2003 (aged 97–98)
Notable works"Socialism – What's In It for You?" (1946)
Years active1926–2003
SpouseHarriet Black
RelativesWilli Wolff (by marriage), Joseph Magil (father)

Background

Abraham B. Magil was born in 1905 to a poor, Jewish, immigrant family in South Philadelphia. His father, Joseph Magil, was a Hebrew scholar; he had three older sisters. He won a scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained a degree in journalism and was a Phi Beta Kappa Key.[1][2]

Career

Daily Worker (1926–1958)
May Day parade float with statue reading the Daily Worker

In 1926, after graduating, he moved to New York City, where he joined the Communist Party (CPUSA) and went on staff at the Daily Worker, the Party's newspaper.[1]

In 1930, he traveled to Russia for the World Congress of Revolutionary Artists and Writers as Party eyes and ballast to non-Party delegates Harry Alan Potemkin and William Gropper. He returned through Berlin.[1][2]

During the Great Depression, the Party sent Magil to Detroit (1933–35) to found a state-wide edition of the Daily Worker. The local edition soon ran out of money, so Magil started to edit the Auto News for the Auto Workers Union, a left-led predecessor of the United Auto Workers. What that newspaper also ran out of money, Magil became local correspondent for the Daily Worker.[1]

During the 1930s and into the 1940s, he worked alongside Joe North at the head of the New Masses: Magil was a hardliner to counterbalance North. He wrote a poem on the death of Soviet poet Mayakovsky, which appeared along with other poetry in the 1938 Anthology of Proletarian Literature in the United States, edited by Granville Hicks. By 1948, when the magazine closed, he became the magazine's executive editor.[1][2]

Magil decided to take his family to live in Palestine. After initial refusal by the State Department ("not be in the interests of the United States") Magil obtained a passport. They lived six months there, during which time Israel declared its independence (May 5, 1948). He served as foreign correspondent for the Daily Worker and Yiddish-language Morning Frieheit. Magil's cousin there, Matja Lessem, had married Dr. Willi Wolff, Israel's first minister of health. He covered the military action of the Palmach, a left-wing, special military unit of the Haganah and interviewed its commander, Yigdal Alon (later Israeli military chief of staff) and second in command Yitzhak Rabin (later Israeli prime minister. Upon their return to New York, he wrote the book Israel in Crisis (New York: International Publishers, 1949).[1]

During much of the 1950s (during McCarthyism), the Party asked Magil to move to Mexico with his family. Again, he worked there as foreign correspondent for the Daily Worker – and also "supplied Party leaders with information on the political situation both in the United States and in Mexico." Mexican Communist he knew included: David Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo, as well as visitors like Pablo Neruda, Juan Marinello, Carlos Raphael Rodriguez, and Hollywood Ten refugees Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner Jr., and Dalton Trumbo.[1]

He returned to the States at McCarthyism's peak, joined the Party's Administrative Committee, establish a National Peace Commission, and continued to write for the Daily Worker.[1]

He interviewed Guatemala's leader Jacobo Arbenz six months before the latter's overthrow. Returning to the States via Mexico, the FBI arrested him in Mexico illegally. Back in the States, he co-wrote the pamphlet "What Happened in Guatemala" with Helen Simon Travis.[1]

During 1955–1956, he was an editor of the quarterly Mainstream and its monthly successor Masses & Mainstream. In 1958, he became editor of the Sunday Worker and foreign editor of the Daily Worker.[1]

Later life

In 1958, Magil took full-time work in medical journalism. He continued Party activity as a member of the editorial board of the progressive monthly Jewish Currents and was member in a Party club of writers led by Si Gerson.[1]

Magil left the Party with many others in 1992 in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and joined the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. In his last decade, he continued to champion the need to build democratic unity to defeat the far-right Republican Party. He also partook in a Marxist discussion group.[1]

Later interviews

In his May 1952 memoir Witness, Whittaker Chambers (who time at the Daily Worker and perhaps the New Masses overlapped) wrote of "Abe Magill [sic] as "a solemn young Philadelphian, known, for his humorless pomposity, as the 'rabbi Magill'."[3]

By October 1952, Magil took his an interview about Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss with Elinor Ferry, a Hiss supporter. This interview was used by later Hiss supporters including Meyer Zeligs (in his 1967 book[4]). Citing the interview in her 2013 book, Julia M. Allen quoted Magil as telling Ferry that Chambers' wife Esther Shemitz and her roommate Grace Lumpkin "appeared to be Lesbians. Esther was masculine in appearance and in her voice. Grace was the softer, more feminine type."[5]

In 1976, Magil corresponded with literary scholar Alan M. Wald. In 1989–1990, he gave interviews to Alan Wald regarding Party literary activities at the New Masses.[2]

Personal and death

He was known as "Abe" and Abraham.[1]

Around 1940, Magil married Harriet Black, a psychiatric social worker who had been National Treasurer of the American Women's Congress; they stayed married 62 years until Harriet’s death in October 2002. They had one child, Maggie, and one granddaughter, Kate.[1] In 1994 he and his wife moved to Arlington, VA to be closer to family but he continued to travel to New York City to attend his Marxist discussion group up until a few months before his death.

He died in January 2003, aged 98.[1]

Works

Pamphlets:

  • "The Truth About Father Coughlin" (Workers Library, 1935)
  • "The Real Father Coughlin" (1938)
  • "The Battle for America: 1776–1861–1941" (New York: International Publishers, 1943)
  • "Socialism – What's In It for You?" (1946)
  • "What Happened in Guatemala" with Helen Simon Travis (1954)

Books:

  • The Peril of Fascism: The Crisis of American Democracy with Henry Stevens (New York: International Publishers, 1938)
  • Israel in Crisis (New York: International Publishers, 1949)

Articles:

  • Daily Worker (1926–1958)
  • Auto News (1930s)
  • New Masses (1930s–1948)
  • Morning Frieheit (1948)

Poetry:

  • Poem on Mayakovsky's death
  • Poetry in the 1938 Anthology of Proletarian Literature in the United States, edited by Granville Hicks

See also

References
  1. Rubin, Daniel (20 March 2013). "Abe Magil: A tribute to a working class, Marxist journalist". People's World. Retrieved 5 October 2016.
  2. Wald, Alan M. (1976). Exiles from a Future Time. New York: Viking. pp. 17, 78, 106 (trip to Russia), 120 (in charge at New Masses), 149–151 (including photo and "full-time"), 178–180 (including biographical details), 195 (Yiddish), 311–316 (hardline), 361 fn6 (interviews), 387 fn 73 (letter). Retrieved 5 October 2016.
  3. Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. New York: Random House. p. 241. LCCN 52005149.
  4. Zeligs, Meyer A. (1967). Friendship and fratricide; an analysis of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. New York: Viking. p. 105. Retrieved 5 October 2016.
  5. Allen, Julia M. (2013). Passionate Commitments: The Lives of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins. SUNY Press. p. 152. Retrieved 5 October 2016.

Sources
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